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Fashion perfumes originated in Belle Époque Paris, and for generations, it was their intoxicating scent that proved to be their most effective selling tool. A cloud of tuberose hanging in the air, for example, might prompt a woman to head out in search of Robert Piguet’s Fracas.

From 1960 — when Marilyn Monroe revealed to a journalist that “all she wore to bed was Chanel No. 5” — celebrity endorsements of a fragrance began to influence consumers powerfully, and continue to do so today. But for a fashion perfume to be a true success story, its introduction must be accompanied by a slick film debuting on YouTube.

Examples abound, from “My Mutant Brain,” a musical comedy that Spike Jonze directed to promote the August 2016 debut of Kenzo World, to “The One That I Want,” a 2014 romantic drama by Baz Luhrmann for Chanel No. 5. Such productions may be just three minutes long, but Hollywood talent is involved, with an average yearlong shooting schedule on par with a major motion picture, and budgets generally match those of independent features.

Brands are more than willing to invest the time and money. “Perfume videos launched online definitely lead to online sales,” said Alexandre Choueiri, the president of international designer collections at L’Oréal USA. One of the brands he oversees, YSL Black Opium, had a surge in sales after a short film by Harmony Korine went live on YSLBeauty.com and Sephora.com in February 2015. “The 30 milliliter was the No. 1 seller at Sephora in the first week of the launch,” he said.

Roja Dove, a fragrance specialist, historian and perfumer, noted that such films are “a really great method of communication for a brand, as it begins like a seed but has the potential to spread like wildfire.”

“The internet has beyond a doubt transformed perfumery — as it has everything else,” he added.

While filmmaking for the internet is a new endeavor for the perfume industry, fragrance films have been made for decades. In 1979, Jacques Helleu, Chanel’s artistic director, invented the medium by enlisting an up-and-coming Ridley Scott to direct “The Swimming Pool,” a television commercial for Chanel No. 5.

“This was before Mr. Scott reached world fame with ‘Blade Runner,’ proving how much Helleu had an unmistakable flair for emerging talents,” said Thomas du Pré de Saint Maur, head of global creative resources for Chanel Fragrance and Beauty.

Chanel later replaced Mr. Scott with the art director Jean-Paul Goude, whose flamboyant, big-budget perfume ads went against the grain of traditional romantic advertising and became a pop culture phenomena. In 1986, Giorgio Armani enlisted Martin Scorsese to direct a short, arty love story gone awry to promote his citrusy Armani Pour Homme, and Calvin Klein and Yves Saint Laurent would later work with David Lynch. Yet the auteur advertising, which dominated consumer brands and intrigued the most inventive fashion names, remained an uncommon approach for fragrance brands.

Today, the insatiable demand for content from consumers has prompted brands to look beyond the traditional realm of fashion photographers to Hollywood, as well as to the independent film world, for directors admired by their target market: millennial customers.

Mr. Choueiri also attributes the surge in production to big data, the computer-assisted analysis of consumer behavior that helps companies refine their offerings to specific audiences. “Launching the traditional 30- to 45-second TV spot is still very important for big brands,” Mr. Choueiri said. “But the market now in Europe and the U.S. is asking for more personalized stories.” So brands will often release several variations of their films to entice different customers.

And not all films have to be big-budget productions to be successful. Short, inexpensive films and moving images made by brands from Comme des Garçons to Maison Margiela also have proved appealing.

For example, three London-based niche perfumers, Bertrand Duchaufour, Geza Schoen and Mark Buxton, have created a narrative-driven brand called Project Renegades. Each of their perfumes is represented by an avatar of its creator, and the brand’s website will be the forum for a digital series involving them.

“It is not just about putting an ad on TV — like that customary pre-Christmas television slot,” Anna-Marie Solowij, a journalist, consultant and co-founder of the Beauty Mart retailing website, said. Social media is the platform for this new brand of visual communication. The creativity has to go live online and on YouTube when it launches.”

Here’s a look at some of the most noteworthy fragrance films:

Kenzo World

“My Mutant Brain,” Mr. Jonze’s short film promoting Kenzo World, has been described as the story of a woman who “breaks free of social constructs through a movement study.”

Debuting in late August — shortly before the start of New York Fashion Week and the Toronto International Film Festival — it became one of the most talked about perfume campaigns in recent memory. Its success was partly due to its star, Margaret Qualley, and her unexpected burst of dance (ballet, yoga poses and even break dancing) through the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles.

Mr. Jonze enlisted several of his frequent collaborators, including Hoyte Van Hoytema as director of photography (he also worked on the James Bond film “Spectre” and Christopher Nolan’s “Interstellar”); the production designer K.K. Barrett (“Lost In Translation”); the film editor Eric Zumbrunnen; and Heidi Bivens, who designed the costumes for Mr. Korine’s crime thriller “Spring Breakers.” As for the standout choreography, it was the work of Ryan Heffington, who works with Sia and Arcade Fire. Expect a sequel.

Comme des Garçons

What is a typical Comme des Garçons Parfums project? Pharrell Williams collaborated with the house in 2014, pumping sales of the woody unisex scent Girl by introducing it as he released a studio album with the same title.

And Katerina Jebb, the photographer and filmmaker who rose to prominence in the 1990s working for avant-garde magazines like The Face, is a longtime collaborator. Her most recent short feature for Comme des Garçons — for the fruity floral eau de parfum Dot — is a wacky mash-up of her video archive, with a promotional spin. Titled “We Can Find Beautiful Things Without Consciousness,” the one-minute-and-25 second vignette debuted on Purple’s television website in February, with offbeat footage ranging from close-ups of a routine dental checkup to moody moving images of Dot’s polka-dot patterned bottle.

YSL Black Opium

Figuring out how to promote Black Opium, a “youthful interpretation” of the legendary 1977 Yves Saint Laurent fragrance Opium, was a challenge, Mr. Choueiri of L’Oréal said. “Customers do not typically react very well to products that are named after a drug, or seem dark, controversial or dangerous,” he said. “So we had to find a way to introduce the perfume to the market in a creative way.”

Enter Mr. Korine, the California filmmaker whose script for Larry Clark’s 1995 drama “Kids” made its lead actress, Chloë Sevigny (the filmmaker’s girlfriend at the time), a star. For Black Opium, Mr. Korine directed the British model Edie Campbell in a 60-second noir thriller set to “Jungle,” a moody ballad by Emma Louise.

Prada Candy L’Eau

For Candy L’Eau, a lighter take on the original musky caramel scent of Candy, a short film series charted the antics of Candy, a self-involved Parisian played by Léa Seydoux, in a riff on François Truffaut’s 1962 film “Jules et Jim.” Prada used not one but two hip Hollywood directors: Wes Anderson and Roman Coppola.

“Name directors can push a perfume film way beyond the beauty industry and trigger a level of curiosity which prompts someone, who is not particularly interested in beauty, or fragrance, to want to know more about the scent,” Emily Dougherty, the beauty director at American Elle, said. “So someone who would never Google the perfume film, might Google it and then buy it if they are interested in the director.”

Susan B. Irvine, a fragrance writer and novelist, credits the Prada Candy series for initiating the spirit of nonconformist transgression that has influenced campaigns like Kenzo World. “Léa Seydoux’s Candy is only interested in stuffing her face with popcorn in one film and cream cakes in another, even though she is being courted by two men throughout the series,” Ms. Irvine said. “Fragrance has always been a safe and very easy way for a women to get a shot of this style of transgressive behavior. It is about buying into the idea of danger and glamour that you can safely partake in but without having to do any of the bad stuff. That is very seductive.”

Givenchy Very Irrésistible Electric Rose

The 2012 film for Very Irrésistible Electric Rose is the fragrance industry’s closest thing to a music video — the bottle doesn’t even make an appearance. “Just how a music video animates a song, a fragrance video can bring the vibe of a scent to life and tell its story,” Ms. Dougherty said.

The three-minute short marked the singing debut of Liv Tyler, the daughter of Steven Tyler, Aerosmith’s lead singer, who covered the INXS hit “I Need You Tonight” in this carefully staged black-and-white production by the Swedish filmmaker Johan Renck. Amanda Seyfried has since replaced Ms. Tyler as the face of the perfume, and while its ads are now more conventionally romantic, each is accompanied by downloadable soundtracks.

Dior J’Adore

Oct. 12 is the introduction date for the fifth in a series of lavish ads in the “J’Adore saga,” as Christian Dior calls its celebration of a modern classic. It also will be the third in the gilt-hued series shot by Jean-Baptiste Mondino.

Though details about the new film remain under wraps, Charlize Theron is slated to return. The Oscar-winning actress has portrayed the “Walking Woman” for J’Adore, performing a leggy runway-style strut in every film, since her 2004 appointment as the fragrance’s celebrity representative. John Galliano, Dior’s former creative director, hired Ms. Theron, and told WWD that she ended up directing the early films. “She knows what she’s doing,” he said.

Calvin Klein Obsession

The photographer Mario Sorrenti was a 21-year-old member of a new generation of emerging photographers with only three assignments to his name in 1991, when the art director Fabien Baron appointed him to shoot a TV commercial for Calvin Klein’s Obsession. The perfume was already iconic thanks to a dramatic narrative-driven 1986 commercial directed by Richard Avedon and powered by a multimillion-dollar budget that helped sell more than $100 million worth of Obsession.

Taking an alternate approach to match the grunge era of the early ‘90s, Mr. Baron advised Mr. Sorrenti to opt for minimalism, and sent him on vacation with not much more than a hand-held camera and his “obsession”: Kate Moss, Mr. Sorrenti’s girlfriend at the time. Stark black-and-white footage of a topless Ms. Moss uttering the word “obsession” became a sensation, and outtakes from the ads ran “over and over for 12 or 15 years,” Michael Gross wrote in his recently published book, “Focus — The Secret, Sexy, Sometimes Sordid World of Fashion Photographers.”

Chanel Égoïste

Sales of Égoïste — the sandalwood-infused third scent for men from Chanel, introduced in 1990 — ultimately proved disappointing. But the commercial that Mr. Goude directed is widely considered the finest fragrance ad ever made. Mr. Helleu at Chanel put it in motion after admiring Mr. Goude’s staging of a lavish procession through Paris for the bicentenary of the French Revolution.

The Égoïste spot featured 47 Chanel-clad models stepping onto the balconies of a white stucco building and shouting, “Égoïste!” (The facade, erected in Rio de Janeiro for the shoot, evoked the InterContinental Carlton Cannes Hotel, that landmark of the French Riviera. Though surreal in its imagery, Mr. Goude said reality prompted the story line. “I noticed every time someone mentioned the word ‘egoist,’ women immediately said, ‘It’s so true. Men are all the same!’ So that’s why you have all these wounded woman on the balcony,” he told Vogue. “Because women all over the world agree that men are a bunch of bastards.”

At the time, Égoïste’s anti-romantic theme was a novel idea and became a potent alternative to the fairy tale story lines customarily used to sell fragrances. Mr. Goude has gone on to direct other Chanel fragrance ads — he also did the introductory commercial for Prada Candy and has been a consultant for Kenzo — but his blockbuster approach to perfume films remains the touchstone for those made by Chanel since then, from the likes of Mr. Luhrmann, Mr. Scorsese and Luc Besson.